


Simply The Flip Side Of Each Other

by theOther_Will_Grayson



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: (technically) - Freeform, Abandonment Issues, Autistic Spencer Reid, Canon Compliant, Drunk Spencer, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, he's just kind of coded like in the show, spoilers up to 7x02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:55:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25209559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theOther_Will_Grayson/pseuds/theOther_Will_Grayson
Summary: "Look, Jennifer, I came to your house ten weeks in a row, crying over losing a friend, and not once did you have the decency to tell me the truth."This is one of those times, from JJ's perspective.
Relationships: Jennifer "JJ" Jareau & Spencer Reid
Comments: 4
Kudos: 96





	Simply The Flip Side Of Each Other

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first CM fic! Here's the thing, I am for sure on the Autistic Spencer Reid train, I think it works super well, I'm just neurotypical, so I'm stuck using what little I know from just talking to neurodivergent folks while also trying to stay true to how I think the character is. What I'm trying to say is, constructive criticism vis a vis autism is super welcome.
> 
> ALSO, this shouldn't happen, but I'm still watching for the first time, and I'm only on season 9, so if I mess up any canon, that's why. Anyways, enjoy!
> 
> Tumblr under the same username!

_ Death asked Life, "We are simply the flip side of each other, yet why do people love you and hate me?" _

_ "Because," said Life, "I'm a beautiful lie and you're the painful truth." _

When he opens the door, Will watches Spencer cringe, but can't bring himself to be offended by the obvious distaste for his presence. All he can really do is stare in shock at the state of the young man in front of him. Ratted hair, undone tie, white shirt soaked to translucency in the rain. It’s Spencer’s eyes that truly concern him, however. They’re unfocused, have to search for a moment for the door frame as he sways for something to lean on. 

“Hi,” Spencer manages. “Sorry.”

Will used to be a cop in New Orleans; before he was a fancy detective he was a uniform, and he’d worked the strip, Mardi Gras, throwing morons in the drunk tank nightly. So it wasn’t like he didn’t know how to deal with drunk people, but this? This requires reinforcements.

“JJ?” he calls over his shoulder. “Come inside,” he tells Spencer, who obeys. “Don’t move, I’m gonna grab you a towel and some clothes.”

JJ appears at the bottom of the steps, and she looks around for a moment before her gaze lands on Spencer. Her expression goes slack as she gasps, “Spence!” her cry muffled for the sake of Henry, who is sleeping upstairs. She rushes over to him, gripping his arms, pulling him into the living room and over to the couch. “Spence, you look like hell,” she says. “What happened to-” she cuts herself off as she notes the unsure way he flops onto the cushion, the heaviness his head seems to contain. “Spencer, are you  _ drunk? _ ”

His glassy eyes fall on hers. “I’m not high.”

And she can’t say anything else, because he’s right, and the unspoken  _ at least _ chills her.

Will rounds the corner of the hallway, holding a towel, a T-shirt, and a pair of sweatpants neatly stacked atop one another, grimacing at the sight of Spencer soaking rain into the throw pillows.

JJ takes the pile from Will. “Thanks.” He hesitates, eyes darting between her and Spencer, but JJ’s places a hand on his chest and presses a kiss to his cheek, telling him silently,  _ Go to bed, I’ve got this. _ He nods and heads upstairs, leaving her with a gentle squeeze of her hand.

“Spencer,” JJ says, setting the pile down. “I think he grabbed the wrong kind of towels. You know where yours are, right?” The dry, older towels, she knew, were probably Spencer’s least favorite texture in the world. Their guest bathroom held newer ones that were his alone; they were softer and didn’t make him cringe and lick his teeth funny as if they itched all of a sudden. “Why don’t you get changed and I’ll put on a pot of coffee?”

“It’s 11:45 pm,” he says.

JJ quirks an eyebrow, unable to resist a smile. “So it’s still a little early?”

Spencer doesn’t return her smile, only hugs the shirt and pants to his chest like a teddy bear before rising. He sways, and JJ reaches out to grab his elbow, but he brushes her off and pushes past her. It stings, the way it always stings when he cringes at her touch, shakes her off, yanks himself back like her fingers are electrified, but she’s learned to tamp that feeling down.

It had been a lot easier for Emily. 

Pouring coffee grounds into the machine, JJ wonders for the millionth time at the relationship between Prentiss and Reid. Emily never had to work at it. Spencer and JJ were friends, close like siblings for longer than Emily had been in the picture, but as soon as she dropped into their lives she was family, and she seemed to have this rhythm with the kid. She knew when he needed quiet, needed space, needed affection, needed a listening ear. On days when Spencer seemed upset and no one could get him to talk, Emily knew when to just talk, monologuing until the little protective ball into which Spencer had curled himself began to unwind. There were things, JJ knew, that Spencer had never told anyone else but Emily, and unlike the rest of them, JJ would always have a special bond with him, but Emily had never needed any extra effort to forge hers.

She takes out her cell and scrolls through her contacts, clicking on the entry  _ Princess _ . If you weren’t listening right, sometimes that’s what “Prentiss” would sound like, and JJ had made fun of her for it one night over a bottle of wine. It was a little joke that was only theirs, and now it was Emily’s cover in her phone.

_ Spence just showed up to my place drunk. _

_ Oh god!!!!! Is he okay? _

_ He’s not high, but he’s a wreck. _

_ I’m pretty sure it’s about you. _

_ Oh no...God, this must be so hard  _

_ on him. Of all of you, I wish he knew. _

_ He’s in a state. In one of those don’t touch _

_ type moods. _

_ Emily what do I do? _

“Smells good.”

JJ jumps at the sound of Spencer’s voice behind her. He’s wearing a blanket from the couch like a cape, leaning on the doorframe of the kitchen. “Should help you feel a little better,” she says. Spencer’s face betrays his doubt. The cell phone lights up silently with a new message, but JJ stuffs it into the pocket of her pjs unread. She’s in this alone.

The pot finishes brewing, and she takes a mug down from the cabinet. It’s boring, printed with logos from a community bank, unlike the mugs in Spencer’s apartment, which are printed with geeky quotes and goofy sayings, buried relics of his hidden quirky side. Spencer doesn’t seem to mind as he takes the mug greedily and likely scalds his tongue with his hasty sips. JJ grabs a mug from their insurance company and pours a cup of her own. They might as well both stay up late tonight.

They end up back on the couch, sipping bitter black coffee in silence. It’s tense, at least for JJ, as she keeps waiting and waiting for Spencer to spill. She thinks,  _ I’m no good at this _ . Lying, that is. Until now, she had considered her position at the defense department a blessing that would help her avoid moments like this.

“Spence,” She pleads. “Talk to me.”

A beat. Then, “Everyone keeps leaving.”

JJ has a million curses she wants to spit, at Spencer’s dad, the job, Ian Doyle, and Jason Gideon most of all. That bastard. 

It all feels like deja vu all over again, only this time Spencer is drunk off his ass instead of high out of his mind, scarily high, like she had only seen in a few nightmarish moments on the job when the unsub was a junkie, and on the other side of her gun. Spencer Reid’s were the last hands she ever expected to find herself prying from around a needle in the bathroom of his apartment.  _ Why did he leave? _ Spencer had slurred, scratches from his own fingernails joining the track marks dotting his forearm.  _ Everyone keeps leaving. _ She had been at a loss for words back then too. She wasn’t technically a profiler, but she still kicks herself every day for not catching his addiction, and if Jason Gideon ever showed his face again, she’d kick that, too.

But really, at the end of the day, she knows she needs to curse herself, too. Not just for the past, but because she knows without him having to say it that she’s on the list of people who left.

“Emily is the only one who didn’t choose it,” Spencer continues. “I know her. If there was any way she could have fought harder to come back to us, she would have.” He shakes his head and lets out a choked laugh. “So why do I feel like she abandoned me?”

JJ’s heart drops to her stomach.  _ She’s alive _ . Two words could dry those tears that have begun to brim around his thousand yard stare, smooth those creases in his eyebrows, disentangle that blanket from the vice of white knuckles. Two words could end so much pain and suffering. Two words could pull Spencer from the ledge on which she sees him teetering. Her own knuckles whiten around the handle of her mug from the effort of holding those words back.

Spencer looks at her, his face gaunt. He’s lost the thousand yard stare; his gaze is zeroed now, sharp as a scalpel where it makes contact. He’s waiting for an answer, she realizes, but what the hell is she supposed to say?

“Spence…” 

And he finally looks away, as if he can tell by her tone that he’s not going to like the next words in that sentence. For however much the team treat him like a child, he in turn treats them equally like parents. It doesn’t take much for him to decide he doesn’t want to listen.

“Spencer, Emily didn’t leave you.”  _ Yes she did _ . “She was taken from you.”  _ That’s the best you’ve got? _ “And that’s the hard part. We had to think of her as a victim. And just like any other casualty —”  _ Oh, great choice of words _ . “ — you start wondering what else you could have done differently. It’s our curse at the BAU. We’re agents tasked with covering one another, and at the same time we’re a family tasked with protecting one another, caring for one another. You can’t untie that.”

She didn’t really answer him. Spencer scrapes the heel of his hand over his thigh. “I didn’t really come here to get my grief profiled, but you know. Ask stupid questions.”

JJ bites her lip, not knowing how to respond without more lies.

“I’m a sad drunk,” Spencer says, and the alcohol takes over for a moment as he reaches to wipe his tears away with little coordination. “I did it on purpose. I had to. I was really happy today. It was a good day. Penelope and I saw a play, and I laughed, and we got ice cream, and I smiled and had a good time and didn’t think about Emily once.”

Spencer swipes at a bit of snot that’s started to run, but barely pauses. He’s like a freight train now, eyes wide, rambling lucidly, clearly, as if he were stone cold sober. 

“When my dad left, not getting better was a betrayal to my mom. When Gideon left, not getting better was a betrayal to myself, to the BAU. But when Emily…” he swallows. “Now, I feel like getting better is a betrayal to her. I feel myself getting better, happier, getting over her. And that...that’s worse than grief.”

God, he  _ wants _ to spiral, she realizes with horror. He didn’t get drunk to drown his sorrows, he got drunk to revive them.

She sets herself, trying not to show her abject panic as she takes his hand. “Spencer.” Her words are firm, steeled with protectiveness. “Emily’s memory is not something fragile that needs protecting through your grief.” JJ bumps him with her shoulder. “She didn’t need that in life, much less death.” This time, Spencer cracks a smile, and it adds five years to her life span. She pulls his hand into her lap, squeezing as if the pressure will make him hear her. 

Spencer looks at their entwined fingers, then up at her, frowning at her lips. And she knows, she’s sure that he’s trying to reconcile the callousness he perceived when she left and the kindness she’s showing him now. She so badly wants to deny it, wants to say,  _ I didn’t leave you like they did _ . But she’s all out of beautiful lies for the day. All that’s left are the ugly truths (and the ugly lies). 

“I’m sorry,” Spencer says.

JJ blinks. “For what?”

There’s a million answers to that question. For barging in, for getting drunk, for dripping all over the sofa. Spencer says none of them. He just lays his head down on her lap, his damp hair seeping rainwater into her sweats.

His breaths begin to deepen, but his fingers fist in the fabric of her pjs and never relax. She exhales, scrubbing her fingers over her face.  _ That went well _ . She pulls out her cell and checks the text from  _ Princess _ .

_ Idk, just listen to him i guess. _

_ He probably feels alone. You just need _

_ to be there. For me. I wish I could be  _

_ there for him right now. _

_ Yeah, me too. _


End file.
